Lost Python sketches to be seen

The sketches were written by late Python star Graham Chapman and found in Los Angeles by his literary executor.

Each one lasts four minutes and they feature a cast of characters which includes an overworked Messiah and a gay budgie.

Comedy group Sketch Club, who include BBC News Online Big Break diarist Tom Barnes, will have the unenviable task of recapturing Monty Python's style at the festival.

The troupe's producer Brian West said: "They are very obviously by the same writer and they are very funny."

Graham Chapman died of cancer in 1989, aged 49.

World première

The sketches are not the first Chapman works to be performed posthumously.

In 2000, a play written by Chapman received its world première at a small Atlanta theatre.

The farce Oh Happy Day had been written by Chapman and comedy writer Barry Cryer in the mid-1970s, and was only re-discovered in the 1990s.

Monty Python, which consisted of five British comedians and American animator Terry Gilliam, debuted on BBC television in 1969.

Their first series was so poorly received that it was replaced in the Midlands by a farming programme, but in time their surrealist, anarchic and imaginative approach became a lasting influence on British comedy.

Members of the group, which includes John Cleese and Michael Palin, have gone on to have successful TV and film careers.